Friday, September 25, 2009

Where to Begin: Imaginary Space and the "Ground Plane"

1. The first thing to draw is your horizon line. Place it anywhere from the middle of the paper or higher. Next attach "wings" (pieces of paper, not shown in the picture above) to the left and right sides of your paper and extend the horizon line across the "wings". This will allow you to place your vanishing points out as far as possible. 2. Place the vanishing points at equal distances from the edge of your drawing paper. 3. Next, draw the closest corner of the "ground plane". It should be about 1 in. and placed in the bottom, center of your drawing paper. 4. Draw you converging lines from the top and bottom points of the corner to the vanishing points. 5. Draw a vertical line between the converging lines to designate the back edge. 6. From the right back edge, draw to the left vanishing point and from the left back edge, draw to the right vanishing point. If you do not keep your drawing symmetrical the front corner will not line up with the back corner. To remedy this, measure out from the center of your paper instead of from the edges when placing the back edge verticals between the converging lines. 7. Now draw the height of the walls. Again if they are not the same height or placed in the same location on the "ground plane", they will not meet at the center. You can fix this by adjusting the height of ONE of the walls. 8. Start putting in your windows, doorways, stairs, etc.